Abstract
The chapter tackles the problem of human existence in existentialism. By focusing on the—intrinsically human—subjective experience of thinking and feeling, existentialist philosophers set out to explore issues related to the meaning and purpose of life. Man is a synthesis of infinite and finite, situation and action, freedom and necessity. As such, man must transcend the conflictual nature of his condition to claim his freedom and realize himself in his eternal value.
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Notes
- 1.
K. Jaspers, La filosofia dell’esistenza, Bompiani, Milano 1943, p. 17.
- 2.
Ibid., pp. 48–49.
- 3.
G.W.F. Hegel, Fenomenologia dello spirito, Einaudi, Torino 2008, p. 62.
- 4.
Ibid.
- 5.
K. Jaspers, La filosofia dell’esistenza, op. cit. p. 65.
- 6.
G.W.F. Hegel, Fenomenologia dello spirito, op. cit. p. 62.
- 7.
Thus Sartre on the self-sufficient character of consciousness, which is therefore not to be conceived as an “already given” or as interior to the subject, but whose origin must always be located outside of it: “Consciousness becomes self-conscious insofar as it is conscious of a transcendent object […] the object is in front of it with its characteristic capacity, but it is simply consciousness of being consciousness in this object. This is the law of its existence” (J.-P. Sartre, La trascendenza dell’ego, Marinotti Edizioni, Milano 2012, p. 34).
- 8.
S. Kierkegaard, Il concetto dell’angoscia-La malattia mortale, Sansoni, Firenze 1973.
- 9.
In Essere e avere (1933) Gabriel Marcel formulates the ontological distinction between problem and mystery: “Problem and mystery are two distinct ways for human intelligence to relate cognitively to reality” (F. Riva, Essere e avere di Marcel e il dibattito su esistenza ed essere nell’esistenzialismo, Paravia, Torino 1990, pp. 89–90).
- 10.
M. Heidegger, Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, trans. Michael Heim, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana 1984, p. 166.
- 11.
“The existentialist will never take man as an end, because man is always to be made” (J.-P. Sartre, 80 L’esistenzialismo è un umanismo, Mursia, Milano 1946, p. 84).
- 12.
H. Bergson, Introduzione alla metafisica, Laterza, Bari, 1970, pp. 44–45.
- 13.
“Man is constantly outside himself: only by projecting and losing himself outside himself does he make man exist, and, on the other hand, only by pursuing transcendent ends can he exist. […] Not in turning towards himself, but always seeking outside himself a purpose—which is that liberation, that particular actualization—man will realize himself precisely as human” (J.-P. Sartre, L’esistenzialismo è un umanismo, op. cit., pp. 85–86).
- 14.
“Here I want, therefore, to recall the determination that in what precedes I gave of the ethical element: that by which man becomes what he becomes” (S. Kierkegaard, Enten-Eller, V, Adelphi, Milano 1989, p. 144).
- 15.
J.D. Wild, Existentialism as a Philosophy, in E. Kern, Sartre: A Collection of Critical Essays, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs (N.J., 1962); J. Macquarrie, In Search of Humanity: A Theological and Philosophical Approach, SCM Press, London 1982, pp. 10–24.
- 16.
W. Kaufmann, Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, New American Library, New York 1975, pp. 40–48.
- 17.
The absence of beingness consists in its existence. “The characters that will turn out to be proper to this being therefore have nothing to do with the simply-present ‘properties’ of a simply-present being, ‘having the appearance’ of being so or so, but are always and only possible manners of being of the being, and nothing else. […] Hence the term beingness by which we indicate such an entity, expresses being and not the what, as it happens instead when we say bread, house, tree” (M. Heidegger, Essere e tempo, Longanesi, Milano 1976, p. 64).
- 18.
“But what is this self? […] it is the most abstract thing of all, which at the same time in itself is the most concrete - it is freedom. […] He who chooses himself discovers that that self which he chooses has an infinite multiplicity in itself. It has a history; a history in which he recognizes his identity with himself” (S. Kierkegaard, Aut-aut, op. cit., pp. 72–74).
- 19.
J.-P. Sartre, L’esistenzialismo è un umanismo, op. cit., pp. 25–29.
- 20.
Ibid., p. 40.
- 21.
Pindaro, Pitiche, II, 72, where it reads “γένοι’, οἷος ἐσσὶ μαθών” (become what you are, having learned it).
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Pugliese, R. (2023). Human Existence. In: The Dizziness of Freedom in Kierkegaard and Sartre. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-38138-6_5
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